28 March 2012 6:18 PM

Don't panic! My advice on how to get through a petrol strike

Francis Maude has had a triumphant week.

On Monday he went on the radio to explain there was nothing remotely improper about selling contact with the Prime Minister to those willing to meet the Premier League rate. Of course the names of people who paid to dine in Downing Street would not be published.

Sure enough Downing Street coughed up the names about an hour later.

Now he is all over the BBC again, doing a Corporal Jones act. ‘People should take sensible steps to have more fuel outside the garages. It's not desperate, and there's no need for everyone to rush to petrol stations.’

Panic? I’d say that’s guaranteed to turn the forecourts into a scene from Airplane!

I like Francis Maude, in the same way I appreciate animals that should not have survived evolution but somehow did, like giant pandas or the duck-billed platypus. He is a living demonstration that nature can be forgiving.

In a Government supposedly dedicated to saving money, Maude is the man in charge of the scheme that gives civil servants individual taxpayer-funded ‘procurement’ cards. They are using them for everything from business class intercontinental flights and hotel rooms when they stay late in the pub to topping up their Oyster cards and getting the milk and tea in. Well, what would you do with a free credit card?

I do not mock Mr Maude over the sad death from Aids of his brother or his heartfelt support for gay marriage. But I do notice he seems to be useful to David Cameron as a flakcatcher, and gay marriage is another not-quite-popular policy on which he has been sent forward to test the enemy fire.

His starring role in the build-up to the petrol tanker drivers’ strike is a very good reason not to have confidence in Downing Street assurances that the military will be brought in to make sure nothing bad happens.

There won’t be enough military drivers to supply your friendly neighbourhood petrol station if the tanker drivers strike next week, even supposing Mr Cameron has the guts to call them up. Petrol will therefore, in some way or another, be rationed.

You, as a member of the public, will have a place on the priority list for fuel below an NHS management training consultant or a local council cycling co-ordinator.

Here is Mr Maude’s advice: ‘The greater extent to which people have fuel in their vehicles - maybe a little bit in the garage as well in a jerrycan - the longer we can keep things going.’

Now here is mine:

When the three-hour queues arrive at your local Tesco, do not join them. Give up. It will save wearing out your temper or getting into fights with queue jumpers. Do something improving instead, like watching Loose Women or betting on tennis matches.

Forget about the school run. The teachers are happy to close the schools every winter as soon as they count three falling snowflakes. They shut them down for mysterious training days on a regular basis. So they can get by without your children if there is a tanker strike.

The trains will be horribly overcrowded. But they are horribly overcrowded anyway. The railway companies will still have fuel. Grit your teeth and catch a train.

If you still have or can get petrol, enjoy the empty roads.

Do not store petrol in those open plastic tubs they sell for children to keep their toys in. It may prove a health and safety problem when you light the barbecue.

The Coalition, I know, will do its best to help us overcome any local difficulties. Mr Cameron advises it would be sensible to top up your tank, presumably in the same way that it would be sensible to breathe.

The Downing Street Cobra emergency system has swung into operation. We could once, of course, have all run our cars on Cobra, if they were suitably adapted. But if Mr Lansley has begun watering the beer it may be too weak to work now.

Note to Cobra’s lawyers: this is a joke. Please do not bother to write to say your beer hasn’t been watered.

While all this nonsense is going on, there will be some rather more serious talking between Mr Len McCluskey’s Unite negotiators and the contractors who employ the 2,000 or so tanker drivers who are members of the union. These talks will involve recognition on both sides that the strike threat is a ploy but that the drivers have genuine industrial muscle.

Ideally for all sides, these will end just before the deadline for industrial action with a settlement that satisfies the drivers and which Mr McCluskey and Mr Cameron can both claim as a triumph.

For you and me the outcome will be a penny or two extra on a litre. Again.

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